Friday, October 18, 2013

Andreas Harsono is likely a familiar name to many human rights advocates and members of Indonesia’s media. The former journalist is known for his support of human rights issues, particularly in the domain of religious freedom and gender.

Since joining Human Rights Watch as an Indonesia researcher in 2008, Andreas has continued his former calling as a teacher of narrative journalism through a course at Yayasan Pantau (Pantau Foundation), which he founded.

His career in journalism started at university where he joined the campus press, despite his father’s wishes that Andreas should study electrical engineering and continue the family’s business upon graduating.

“I worked in an ordinary [non-media] company to study management” after graduation, Andreas says. “But after a year, I told my father that I did not enjoy it at all. I only wanted to become a journalist.”

Andreas joined the Jakarta Post as a cub reporter from 1993 to 1994. His contract was prematurely terminated when the Post learned that Andreas helped found the Alliance of Independent Journalists (AJI), as an alternative to the government-controlled Indonesian Journalists Union (PWI), which held sole sway over the profession by official decree.

After leaving the Post, Andreas worked as a correspondent for Bangkok-based newspaper The Nation. He is also one of the founders of Southeast Asian Press Alliance, Institute for the Studies on Free Flow of Information (ISAI) and Pantau.

He was once arrested when investigating the Sunni and Shia conflict in East Java’s Sampang district, for “intruding into a conflict area without a permit.” The police released him after a night in jail.

Aggregates uncensored news

Though long active on social media through his eponymous blog, Andreas only became active on Twitter after the attack on Ahmadiyah Muslims in Cikeusik, Banten that left three dead.

“After the incident, I tweeted frequently about the killing.”

Andreas during a visit to slain human rights activist Munir Said Thalib in Batu, East Java, on June 7, 2013. (Photo courtesy of Andreas Harsono)

Andreas posted a video of the attack to YouTube after a leading TV news channel heavily censored the most brutal footage.

Andreas feels that news outlets’ self-censorship had the effect of downplaying the murder. Though his number of followers spiked, some have accused him of “having certain interests” by uploading the video.

No stranger to death threats, Andreas was once threatened for writing a blog post on the murder of Madurese in Pontianak, West Kalimantan, in 2009.

He considers himself to be a “sense maker” and news aggregator of unedited accounts from blog posts and social media. He says he’s adapted to this role from lessons imparted by US journalist Bill Kovach, from whom he studied at Harvard University as a Nieman Fellow.

His @andreasharsono Twitter account has nearly 20,000 followers. But he warned that not everything said on the Internet is trustworthy.

Journalists should also show their followers how to make sense of complex data, he counsels. “A tweet should be useful in the sense that it gives information and takes a corresponding stance.” Tempo magazine founder Goenawan Mohamad is one of Andreas’ favorite Twitter feeds.

“I also follow some organizations, such as Kontras [Commission for Missing Persons and Victims of Violence], media such as Tempo and the Jakarta Globe and human rights activists including Usman Hamid and Hariz Azhar. I’m not following [President Susilo Bambang] Yudhoyono. I don’t need to follow him, because every time I open my eyes, he’s there.”

No more gatekeepers

Media professionals can no longer act as gatekeepers, Andreas says, as social media empowers anyone to shape public opinion.

Screen shot 2013-10-18 at 1.08.28 PM

“Editors used to be gatekeepers of information received by the media,” he says. “But with the rise of social media, this traditional boundary no longer exists.”

Andreas said media organizations have shrunk as the Internet allows people to assume new roles.

“You can be a publisher via a blog, broadcaster via YouTube or podcast and social networker via Twitter,” he says. “The role of gatekeeper has been written off in this Internet era.”

Andreas says although social media may not always be reliable and can be dangerously misleading, it also gives consumers an opportunity to get comprehensive, uncensored information.

Social media maxims from Andreas Harsono

1. Do not use social media to merely spread personal information. “People are not interested with your personal life. There’s no use of tweeting like ‘I feel tired’ or ‘It’s really hot’ or ‘I’m hungry.’”

2. Consider Facebook as the user’s living room, a place where you receive guests who are your friends, colleagues and others. Don’t say bad words in someone’s living room; it’s unethical.

3. Don’t accept friend requests of people you never meet physically. You have to make sure that your Facebook friends are ethical, will not steal your private photos and will not improperly respond to your status.

Follow Friday is a series of profiles on the people who make up Indonesia’s ever-growing Twitterverse. Each week we feature one person whose tweets are either informative, funny or controversial. Follow at your own risk.

Tuesday, October 08, 2013

Andreas Harsono

The Indonesian government effectively blocks foreign media from freely reporting in Papua by limiting access to only those foreign reporters who get special official permission to visit the island.

Andreas Harsono, Indonesia researcher

BALI –On September 23, two officers with the Indonesian police Brigade Mobile (“Brimob”) fired into a stone-throwing crowd, killing a 17-year-old student and seriously wounding three other people. The police posted guards at the hospital where the wounded were being treated, and required visitors to leave their mobile phones at the entrance. Police reportedly confiscated the mobile phone of a nurse who had used it to take photos of the victims’ wounds.

That’s a story that some of the thousands of correspondents on Indonesia’s island of Bali for the October 5-8 Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation(APEC) summit might want to follow up on. But that won’t happen because the incident occurred in the town of Waghete, in Indonesia’s far eastern Papua province, where foreign journalists are barred from going or reporting.

The Indonesian government effectively blocks foreign media from freely reporting in Papua by limiting access to only those foreign reporters who get special official permission to visit the island. The government rarely approves applications for foreign media access to Papua or delays processing for such applications, hampering efforts by journalists and civil society groups to report on breaking events. Those journalists who do get official permission are invariably shadowed by official minders who strictly control their movements and access to interviewees.

Although the government permits Indonesian domestic media to report from Papua, there are serious questions about their reliability in the face of government efforts to control the flow of information from the troubled region. Official documents leaked in 2011 indicate that the Indonesian military employs around two dozen Papua-based Indonesian journalists as informers , raising doubts about the objectivity of their reporting. The military has also financed and trained journalists and bloggers, warning them about alleged foreign interference in Papua, including by the U.S. and other governments.

Such tactics don’t comport with Indonesia’s self-branding as a stable, progressive democracy which blends “dynamism and diversity.”

What does the government have to hide? A litany of violence and abuses.

The incident in Waghete—which the Indonesian government has yet to investigate if police used unnecessary lethal force—is just one of many troubling incidents of violence and impunity which have characterized life in Papua since Indonesian military forces deployed there in 1963 to counter a long-simmering independence movement.

The Free Papua Movement is small and poorly organized, though it has increased in sophistication in recent years. Tensions heightened in Papua in 2013 following the February 21 attack on Indonesian military forces by suspected elements of the separatist Free Papua Movement. The attack killed eight soldiers, the worst act of violence against the military in the area in more than ten years.

Human rights abuses remain rife in Papua. Over the last three years alone, Human Rights Watch has documented dozens of cases where police, military, intelligence officers, and prison guards have exercised excessive force when dealing with Papuans exercising their right to peaceful assembly.

On April 30, police fired on a group of Papuans who peacefully gathered in Aimas district, near Sorong, to protest the 50th anniversary of the 1963 handover of Papua to Indonesia from Dutch colonial control. Two men, Abner Malagawak and Thomas Blesia, were killed on the spot. A third victim, Salomina Kalaibin, died six days later from gunshot wounds. Police detained at least 22 individuals and charged seven of them with treason.

An Indonesian army battalion went on a rampage in Wamena on June 6, 2012, burning down 87 houses, injuring 13 native Papuans and killing one. Their attacks came after villagers had beaten two soldiers whose motorcycle had run over a Papuan child. One soldier died in the attack. Police arrested three Papuan suspects. On June 12, the Indonesian military “solved” the incident with a traditional stone-burning ceremony in which the Papuan populace was asked to close the case. Not a single soldier was tried.

In August 2011, the Jayapura military tribunal convicted three soldiers from the same battalion after soldiers shot and killed Reverend Kinderman Gire on the suspicion he was a Papuan separatist.

At the trial, the defendants claimed Rev. Gire led them to believe he was a member of the rebel Free Papua Movement and tried to grab a rifle from one of them, who then shot him in the chest. They dumped the body in a river, after cutting cut off his head. Again, the tribunal convicted them of a lesser offense of “disobeying orders” and sentenced them respectively to just six, seven, and fifteen months in prison.

Impunity has become synonymous with the operations of security forces in Papua. While a handful of military tribunals have been held in Papua, the charges have been inadequate and soldiers who committed abuses continue to serve in the Indonesian military. in January 2011, a military tribunal in Jayapura, Papua, convicted three soldiers from the Nabire-based Battalion 753 and sentenced them to between eight to twelve months in prison for the brutal torture of two Papuan farmers, burning one farmer’s penis. Despite video showing the involvement of six soldiers, the tribunal tried only three of the six soldiers, and on lesser military discipline charges instead of torture. The soldiers have not been discharged from military service.

Indonesian government also consistently arrests and jails Papuan protesters for peacefully advocating for independence or other political change. Currently 55 Papuan activists are jailed for “treason.” They include Filep Karma, a Papuan civil servant, who serves 15 years in prison for raising the Morning Star flag, –an independence West Papua symbol, in December 2004. The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention said that Karma was not given fair trial in Indonesia and asked the Indonesian government to immediately and unconditionally release Karma. Indonesia has refused the UN recommendation.

These incidents – and the inability of foreign media to cover them – have drawn international criticism, but not generated enough pressure to end the reporting ban.

During the Universal Periodic Review of Indonesia at the United Nations’ Human Rights Council on May 23, 2012, France called on Indonesia to ensure free access for civil society and journalists to Papua. The United Kingdom noted the “increase in violence” in Papua and “encouraged Indonesia to tackle violence against minority faiths and accept visit requests by Special Rapporteurs.” Austria, Chile, the Maldives, and South Korea called on Indonesia to accept standing invitations to the UN rights experts and groups known as special procedures. Mexico specifically asked the Indonesian government to invite the special rapporteurs to Papua. Germany asked Indonesia to release Papuan political prisoners including Filep Karma.

But the Indonesian government is adamant in its refusal to loosen its chokehold on journalists’ access to Papua. On July 16, 2013, Indonesia’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Marty Natalegawa defended the foreign media ban by warning of unnamed “elements in Papua who are keen to gain international attention by doing harm to international personalities including journalists.”

Natalegawa’s determination to keep Papua behind a censored curtain only fosters security forces’ impunity and fuels resentment among Papuans. It’s time for the Indonesian government to free the media and civil society to shine a light on conditions in Papua, good and bad.

Andreas Harsono is Indonesia researcher for Human Rights Watch. His Twitter is @andreasharsono.